Friday, February 19, 2010

A Cloud Turning Point For A Microsoft Dynamics VAR

Simon Whittle, the COO of The AIS Group , a longtime Berkeley, Calif. Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Dynamics GP accounting solution provider, decided it was time to add a cloud solution last summer after losing a number of deals to cloud/SaaS pioneer NetSuite.

The "tipping point" came after a notoriously conservative financial customer that The AIS Group had worked with in the past decided to go with NetSuite rather than Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Whittle says The AIS Group was "surprised" by the customer's decision, given what had been a hesitancy among financial customers to "give up control of IT and data management for obvious reasons including regulatory" requirements.

The customer was impressed by NetSuite's ability to offer a global solution via the Web with full Asian double byte language support. That meant full support for Asian countries where the customer was doing some outsourcing. That language support and NetSuite's ability to provide solid 24 hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week support were critical factors.

That deal was also a wake-up call of sorts for The AIS Group, which decided to look at becoming a NetSuite partner. To The AIS Group's pleasant surprise, a number of the executives from NetSuite had their roots in the ACCPAC Software that The AIS Group had sold at one time.

"The NetSuite guys heading up the channel were all old industry guys," he said. "They had been around the block just like us." That made the move more comfortable for The AIS Group which brought on the NetSuite product line last October.